AI is a massive Ponzi scheme needing new recruits so rich ppl don't lose lots of money. Universities are clearly a target for recruitment. In my 30 yrs in academia I can't remember ever feeling so much pressure to comply with new tech, & my uni is miles from the hysteria shown in other institutions.

Journals like this should be the backbone of our local publishing landscape! But they're resource intensive so we need a national strategy to support, resource & grow them. They're fit for our purpose as local researchers & knowledge consumers. #academia #research writers should look here first!

Predictably…

"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

‘Poverty in Aotearoa is not accidental’: How our systems deliberately keep people poor thespinoff.co.nz/books/25-09-...

Sanctions are the minimum. End the Zionist colonial project : our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/nz...

This seems fine.

Springer Nature are increasingly trying to sell their publishing agreements with "research integrity" training in a further attempt to take away work from libraries.

Here's the thing, we already were amongst the lowest levels of funding for research in the developed world. And these cuts & reprioritisations make this even worse. You can't determine immediate economic implications from a lot, if not most, research. So, these decisions misunderstand science.

YASS WHAEA!!! #nzpol

Here's a recording of my presentation to Research Support Community Day (the Aussie version) back in June. It's based on the paper Craig Murdoch and I wrote for the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. youtu.be/Y89eo1Abn4w?...

I wrote some words with Donna Coventry about @tuwhera.bsky.social for @doaj.bsky.social. Give it a read.

Facts

Good mediastudies.hypotheses.org/6850

"Every science publisher pays men more than women. In 2024, the lowest median pay gap favouring men was 9.5% (Springer-Nature), followed by Sage (13.3%), Wiley (17.7%), and Informa (formerly Taylor & Francis) (22.7%)."

This, but make it Indigenous/Tiriti-led. Scientific Publishing: Enough is Enough open.substack.com/pub/asterain...

With the rise in technologies able to produce massive datasets (genomics, eDNA), good protocols for #Indigenous #data #sovereignty are essential - my latest for Plant & Food Research, with Maui Hudson, Amanda Black, Rangitāne o Manawatū, Linley Jesson et al www.plantandfood.com/en-nz/articl...

So below is on the uptake of new AI-based tools in scholarly publishing, of Oxford University Press partnering with Hum on an "AI-based editorial assistant." [And note that they are actually naming the type of job this tool is meant to be a substitute for.] www.alpsp.org/news-publica...

I'm talking about building an equitable and sustainable shared infrastructure for diamond open access in Aotearoa (NZ) and this article doi.org/10.31274/jls... at this year's Research Support Community Day. Get along to it, if you can www.rscday.info/about/2025

#5 The Tuwhera team launched AUT Library's first two OERs. Physiotherapy Otherwise is openly available here oercollective.caul.edu.au/physiotherap..., The 6Ps of Creativity is currently under student review but will be open soon!!! #openscholarship #OER

Looking forward to soon replacing "should" with "will". "non-commercial open access routes, like the “diamond” model, should be promoted, and research assessments should shift away from focusing on journal rankings to encourage more responsible research dissemination." doi.org/10.1590/0001...

"It is, I think, impossible to suggest you’re for decolonization without being against colonialism, and what’s happening in Gaza has been colonialism going back as far as the Nakba of 1947/8"

Tuwhera is back on social media with a series of updates😀 #1 The International Journal of Creative Media Research joined Tuwhera ijcmr.online/2/issue/view.... The back issues were all in HTML so after much trial and error we managed to publish issues 1 to 10 in HTML making it fun and interactive!!!

As we talk about Microsoft and Amazon pulling back on data center projects, don’t ignore what’s happening in China, where “projects are failing, energy is being wasted, and data centers have become ‘distressed assets’ whose investors are keen to unload them at below-market rates.”

Craig Murdoch & I wrote this after interviewing editors from @tuwhera.bsky.social journals. The message is clear: investing even a small percentage of the budgets that go to the commercial publishers could sustain a shared OA infrastructure for Aotearoa. www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article...